NGPF Blog

The following post is courtesy of Lois Stoll, Benjamin Logan High School (Bellfontaine, OH). In this post, she discussed how she incorporated manipulatives into the ANALYZE: Categorizing Credit lesson!
Directions for adding manipulatives to the ANALYZE: Categorizing Credit lesson.
To make this lesson more interactive, print labels and make cards for each group of students. The Yellow cards represent the different categories of credit:
I = Installment
S = Secured
V = Variable
R = Revolving
U =...

NGPF Fellow Maureen Neuner is consistently in touch with us here at NGPF, which we love love love! Her most recent feedback seemed worth sharing, as it might entice some of you to check out our credit units for use next year. Here’s Maureen’s email [with comments from Jessica in brackets]…
Happy Friday! I just wanted to give you some feedback on the credit unit I just completed. Every year I feel like I redo my lessons for credit because there is so much information out there...

I’ve got such a backlog of “things I’d like to read” that I started putting 3 per week on my “to do” list and “assigning” the readings to myself. This article from EdSurge made its way into last week’s reading list — What Does a ‘Modern Classroom’ Look Like — and What Should Educators Leave Behind? While I’m not sure I agree 100% with ALL of their ideas, the introductory questions answered by the panel of...

Way back in August of 2015 I created what remains one of my favorite projects — “Joining the Market,” also known as “Ravioli Den” among friends. I started off just wanting to create something that simulated the buying and selling of shares, but it rapidly morphed into an awesome, whole-class game that teaches roughly 10 investing concepts in two class periods: It’s truly one of my finest works at NGPF. So, I brag about it all the time, but recently, teachers...

At NGPF, we’re always signing off newsletters, product launches, and emails with some rendition of “Let us know how it goes in your classroom! We love feedback!” Here’s a little story highlighting why we crave feedback so much:
Tim & I are teaching a two-month, 24-hour personal finance course at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto (where NGPF was born!), which is one of our limited times to try our materials LIVE, in person, with real students, as we play the...

Paying for College, Savings, Teaching Strategies, Featured NGPF Lesson, Professional Development

Here was the Savings Lesson delivered yesterday as part of the 24 Hour Personal Finance Course NGPF is teaching at Eastside Prep.
Key learning objectives:
Importance of starting to save when you are young (i.e. the power of compound interest)
Understanding the psychological barriers to saving and how they can be overcome
Documents:
Lesson Guide (Note: I have terrible habit of going off script so what follows does not mirror this lesson plan)
Student Activity Packet
Opened with 4 Poll...

First, for those who have clicked over from our emailed product release, here’s the promised ONE STOP SHOP FOR THE COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS.
If you didn’t receive our email (Why aren’t you on our mailing list??? Sign up at the bottom of this page!) read on…
On occasion, teachers who have found our lesson guides on our website have emailed to ask, “So, it says #13-17 are assessment questions, but I don’t see those anywhere. How do I access those...

We’ve got a new product release planned for next week, so that deadline should have all of my attention right now, but instead I got sidetracked by something the Philadelphia Fed featured on Twitter. Imagine that — Twitter distracted me from work…
Anyway, in case you teach personal finance and also got caught up on social media instead of lesson planning, my Thursday gift to you: a Quick & Easy Lesson on Credit Scores.
Start class with one (or both) of these Discussion...

We’re always excited to generate new content for teachers to use, and we’ve got two outstanding new lessons for you this week.
Investing for Retirement
First, if you use our Investing for Retirement lesson, your students will learn about Social Security, pensions, 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, and Traditional IRAs. More importantly, they’ll leave understanding why they need to start saving for retirement ASAP! What to look out for:
We love our “Types of Retirement...

Our September product releases just keep on rolling with our latest feature — the Next Gen Personal Finance Project Bank! This is a convenient way to spice up your personal finance curriculum with some engaging, in-depth work for your students. To jump right in, click the link above. For a little more support, here are…
Project Bank FAQs
1. You already have an Activity Bank. How is this different?
Here’s how I think of it:
Activities allow students to...

Today, we released two brand new units on Taxes and Insurance. Over 175 new resources. 14 brand new activities. All for our dedicated community of teachers just in time for the new school year.
These are two topics teachers repeatedly told us were difficult to teach, so we decided we needed to give our community what they wanted.
The reaction has been spectacular! It’s only 2:00 p.m. here in California and we’ve already broken our single-day record for site visits!
What’s...

It is one thing to tell students that credit cards carry high interest rates, it is probably more effective for learning to have them actually input those high interest rates into their own credit card calculator to see the impact on payments. In this activity “Excel: Build a Credit Card Calculator,” students get an opportunity to flex their spreadsheet muscles through an activity that provides four options based on level of expertise. Please share this with your math department too as...

I know what you’re thinking…how can I spice up credit scores and make it a more engaging topic for high school or college students for that matter. For those students without credit cards (and with no other borrowing that requires a credit check), this may seem to be one of those topics that they quickly categorize into the “This doesn’t apply to me.” Unfortunately, as the use of FICO scores has extended beyond simple credit decisions to apartment rentals, insurance premiums and...

Activity, Paying for College, Question of the Day, Current Events, Featured NGPF Lesson

As admissions decisions are delivered to households (and email accounts), I thought I would highlight another of our college related activities, “What’s the Value Of A College Education?“. This is one of my favorite activities to motivate my freshman students. While the value of a college education definitely goes beyond the higher earnings potential, it still is quite eye-opening for students to actually quantify what the value is.
In this activity students first make an estimate as...

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